


cutthroat

by Tosa



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Nonlinear Narrative, disjointed drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-23
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tosa/pseuds/Tosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, Eridan wasn't much of a hunter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cutthroat

The sea stretches out, a vast and unyielding entity. She throws her arms, ironically, into the air in worship of it.

“Home!” she cries.

 

 

You were as of yet inexperienced in the art of flaying the custodians of trolls you barely knew. So when you finally had the thing – a white fish, big by dinner’s standards but almost ridiculously unfit for the protection of a grub – you tossed it onto the deck of your ship, hoping it’d choke to death.

But it kept flopping there. It choked and writhed, looking at you with gigantic, glassy eyes that pleaded for mercy from a comrade of the sea. Water gargled from its gaping throat, foam pouring in cascades onto the wood like storm clouds. The stench of salt was beginning to make you want to vomit, and so you grabbed the nearest sharp thing – some loot from an old adventure with Vriska – and you started to stab it, blindly, in the hope that the flailing would stop.

In the end, your first kill was too messy to feed to Fef’s lusus. You’d gone through the trouble of orphaning some kid in order to prove your worth – but what _did_ you prove, other than that you were too easily panicked and sentimental to provide?

She gingerly touched what remains of the carcass you managed to bring her, tendrils of violet rising from its veins like smoke. You’d hoped they wouldn’t stain Fef’s walls – she was fond of that shade of pink.

She’d smiled so prettily at you. “You’ll dugong better next time!”

 

  

The troll had screamed as the harpoon – an antique that you’d pillaged from some grimy cave on some forgotten roleplaying campaign – plunged straight into the chest of her angler fish lusus. The troll lashed out at you, claws swiping at the gills on your neck, gnashing her teeth like she wished to crush your bones between them. She had gone nearly feral, her only concern your death in return for that of her custodian. Meanwhile, though indigo poured from the angler fish’s wounds, the creature didn’t utter a single cry of pain. It snapped its guillotine jaws at you, a last show of strength in its dying throes…

And then let out the most mournfully troll-like noise you’d ever heard, as a particularly lucky roll of 8-sided di decapitated her beloved charge.

You surfaced to Vriska’s expectant grin, the taste of your own caste on your tongue.

 

  

Feferi held the thing in her hands and cried. It was a tiny white fish, unfit to ever become a custodian. It couldn’t have had any family. It _didn’t_. She was crying for no reason.

A plastic garrote ensnared its neck. You told her it was starting to smell like decay and tried to pry it from her hands, but she held on tighter and cried ever harder. You weren’t strong enough to unlock her fingers and so you let her go, awkwardly watching her mourn a life that wouldn’t have ever mattered.

You told her so, and she screamed at you through her tears.

The fish wasn’t weak! she yelled. It was a fish that lived in heavy currents. It didn’t even have a swim bladder because it didn’t need to float; it spent its whole life building muscle fighting against a rush of water that bombarded it from all sides.

It could’ve been strong, she sobbed. Even if it could never raise a troll, it could still be strong. It could swim out to sea and lay eggs and have a big, _big_ family. And that family could feed somebody else’s. So it wasn’t weak, it wasn’t alone, and above all, _it wasn’t_ _useless._

She started to pet the damn thing. You wouldn’t understand, she sulked. You put too much faith in the spectrum, in the fittest annihilating the unfit.

“Fef,” you sighed. “It’s just a _fish._ ”

 

 

You’d had to go back and find the troll girl’s head. Vriska said her lusus would be pretty non-fucking-plussed to be given anything less than the _entire_ corpse. So you dove back into the putrid indigo cloud, the last fingers of which were just barely beginning to disperse.

If she flirted even a little more blackly with you, you thought, she’d be driving a knife straight into your chest.

It took a while. There was a point when you’d been running your hands through thick tufts of seaweed and gotten bitten by something, and you thought, forget it. Vriska’s fucking lusus could eat a steaming pile of its own shit for all you cared. Eventually, though, you saw the familiar sheen of gray skin, just barely illuminated by the shyest rays of the moon.

When you finally held the head in your hands, it looked like a sorry fish, fins torn and black lips puckered with the beginnings of decompositional gasses and water. The skin already lacked the heady glow of something alive. It looked even more pathetic in the grasp of your gaudily ringed fingers.

You felt – not bad, exactly. You regretted that it was a sea troll who had to die. But you’d struck up a deal with Vriska long ago. There would never be any orphans.

 

 

“Well you know what, Eridan?” Of course she’d one day rule the planet. A creature as intense and rare as her had no purpose more fitting. “ _We’re_ just fish!”

 

 

Vriska wasn’t even there when you surfaced. She’d gotten bored and went back to her hive. You’d killed a highblood – not a felony for you, but still, a fucking _highblood_ – for nothing. In a rage, you tossed the head as far as you could into the sea, too angry to care that you’d spent so long to gather it in the first place.

It sunk, neck first, and for a moment looked like a girl drowning.

 

 

“What did you expect?” the future queen giggled. “She’s _black_ for you. She wasn’t going to make things easy.”

 

 

Never once did the troll girl haunt your dreams. You couldn’t remember the shape of her gills if you tried, the way her eyes shone the sallowest shades in death. You couldn’t even remember if she was of your _exact_ caste, or a shade lower, just on the cusp of land dwelling.

What you do remember is the sensation of breathing water filled with her blood. The flavor soaked your throat for weeks after and became the aftertaste of your every meal, a constant, lurking reminder of treason. You plunged your face into the water and breathed in huge gulps, hoping to ingest salt, seaweed, even fucking _sand,_ if only the hint of blood would go away. But it didn’t. All that filled your throat was water.

(Little did you know, your attempts to get rid of the haunting taste had scraped your throat raw. That was the flavor of _your_ blood. Not that that made a difference.)

  

 

The entire reason you started hating land-dwellers, you think, was probably Vriska’s doing.

(If you would ever admit that you were actively avoiding the water, that was probably her fault, too.)

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been listening to this gorgeous, metaphorical song called “Trout Heart Replica” that just tears me up inside. Coincidentally, the book I have to read for school is also about fish; it’s not as touching – it’s definitely more about science and ecosystems and the downfall of the fish industry – but it was still very inspiring when combined with the beautiful sound of Amanda Palmer’s voice.  
> Necks, the concept of gutting, etc. became a kind of motif here. But did you know? While I was trying to name this fic, I found out there’s a species of fish called the “cutthroat trout”! Haha, what a coincidence! (Or, not. When you think of fish being prepared, what’s the most violent image, aside from the hook, that comes to your mind? The head being chopped off, right? It’s fitting, considering Homestuck’s canon seems to have a lot of decapitation…)  
> Oh, and the use of the term "family" in that one scene was used because for the most part, Eridan and Feferi are not speaking in direct quotes. We don't know what she said specifically. We only know the gist, as we would understand it.


End file.
